The Heel Report – Week 1
As a fan I have always been naturally drawn to cheering for heels and booing faces, now maybe I have the WWE backwards but it just seems to me that heels are far more entertaining to watch, so I have decided to showcase the heels of the WWE in all their cheating and underhanded glory with this weekly heel report.
Heels are essential to the very foundation of the WWE, but what makes a good one? Every week I will be judging the heels of Raw, ECW and Smackdown to see who the best in the company is at this time.
Picking a top ten based on a system of heel pluses and minuses and awarding them points accordingly I will be listing them in order and adding their points up every week to develop a running top list to find out who the overall greatest heel at present in the WWE.
This week’s top ten:
1st Place: Edge
Despite a loss of momentum this week after Jeff Hardy’s statement on the cutting edge the rated-R superstar still finds the top spot this week through a mixture of earnest, yet whiny mic skills and the classic heat generating heel move of walking out on a match against C. M. Punk and getting intentionally disqualified. (10/10 points)
2nd Place: Chris Jericho
A mixed bag in this first week for the former Ayatolla of Rock and Rolla as being subject to a couple of face attacks works against his ruthless ring and mic work, meaning that Jericho comes in second on the first edition of the heel report. (9/10 points)
3th Place: Jack Swagger
Natural charisma and a great heel presence makes Swagger the big fish in a small heel pond over on the “land of extreme” and secures fourth place for the All American American. (8/10 points)
4rd Place: Dolph Ziggler
A cocky attitude and a surprising vicious attack that downed the 7”4 Punjabi playboy earns a bronze for the Smackdown new comer this week. (7/10 points)
5th Place: The Miz
A torrent of jerk-titude and laying into Raw’s resident top face, John Cena, while letting The Big Show take care of business means that The Chick Magnet is rewarded with middle place on the chart. (6/10 points)
6th Place: Matt Hardy
The classic heel move of using a “fake” cast puts Hardy into the chart at sixth place (breaking kayfabe, mad props to Hardy for using a legitimate injury to boost his heel presence rather than detracting from it). (5/10 points)
7th Place: Randy Orton
Despite a vicious attack after their match, the leader of Legacy being sneak attacked and chased by the joke of a face that is Shane McMahon brings the 3rd generation star down to seventh place despite being arguably overall the best heel on Raw at this time. (4/10 points)
8th Place: The Big Show
A lack of in ring action this week is made up by a dastardly beat down on a weakened John Cena, meaning a place in the chart for the world’s largest athlete. (3/10 points)
9th Place: Ted DiBase
General heel assistance and a cheap slap to the animal leading to a victory by disqualification gets the son of The Million Dollar Man a priceless two points. (2/10 points)
10th Place: Maryse
Last place in the chart goes to the entrancing Divas champion after a valiant effort in the bitchiness department and laughing after delivering a nasty looking bump to Mickey James on the outside. (1/10 points)
Just to spice up the report here is a couple of other quick segments highlighting the presence of some superstars:
The Face-off (A space devoted to the naming and shaming of a particular faces gimmick, attire, or performance)
This week – Jeff Hardy’s nickname; ‘The Extreme Enigma’
What does this even mean? So he’s apparently hardcore and mysterious, what is mysterious about Jeff Hardy. If anything he is predictable in his “hardcore” attitude. If there is a risk he’ll take it, if there is a ladder he’ll jump off it, if there is a make-up counter he’ll abuse it. We all know the score. It all seems to be just another ploy to get kids into believing Jeff Hardy is their cool new role model…wait the WWE want kids to look up to a guy that jumps off high places and takes risks whenever he can, wow good move guys, that’s really “kid friendly”. As Good ol’ JR said this week as Jeff made his way to the ring; “He is an individual.” Derp!
Face the Facts (A place for me to admit that a certain face deserves praise for their work in the ring or on the mic)
This week – Evan Bourne
The highflier is undeniably athletic and seems to love what he does. He takes bumps as well as unleashing impressive looking offensive manoeuvres making him a convincing underdog and resulting in believable wins against superstars who may be bigger or have more experience than the dynamic newcomer. Don’t be fooled by this fresh-faced youngsters appearance though, he has an impressive nine years of experience on the Indy circuits and has appeared in TNA and ROH before enrolling in the WWE’s developmental territories. This makes him a respectable, hard working wrestler who could hopefully have a long and successful career in the WWE.
On the Rise (A segment taking the time to showcase a heel who did not make the list but shows future promise)
This week – Zack Rider
A fresh start for the once dull member of La Familia in the “land of extreme”, with terrible attire and an irritating noise for a catchphrase things could be on the rise for this hair obsessed young upstart.
Flat Footed (A piece highlighting a heel who didn’t try to sell their gimmick to the fans or their opponent this week)
This week – Mike Knox
A squash match was wasted this week, ruining a returning R-Truths first appearance on Smackdown for a couple of weeks. Mike Knox may have the character of a bruiser but it takes more than bear-like swipes and throws to sell yourself as a top beefy monster heel. Where is the growling at the crowd? Where is the mocking an opponent’s futile attempts to knock you down? He needs to take a few lessons from Kane on how to be a consistently threatening powerhouse, win or lose. Otherwise once the WWE get bored of handing him easy victories he will disappear faster than a certain yellow-teethed ogre who never blamed himself.
If you disagree with any of my opinions or decisions then feel free to comment below.
I also extend the invitation for someone else to start up a Face report; maybe you could judge who has the best generic catchphrase or who slaps the most fans hands *yawn*. That’s it for the heel report for now; see you next week, same heel time, same heel channel…well you know what I mean.
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Slight Mess up with Swagger and Ziggler there. I switched them round at the last minute after writing their sum ups, so the positions and points are right but the comments are a little off.
Oh well, first time mistakes I guess, doh!
Pretty good picks. I agree with you. Heels are much more entertaining then faces nowadays. They seem to bring more to the show, and add more drama then faces as well. Only thing is I would have rated Orton higher then 7th, he is extremely over with the crowd, and while the Miz has done a great job of siring things up with Cena, he seems a little too young yet to be rated that high. I definently look forward to reading more of these.
I agree with you completely, in general Orton is a much better heel than The Miz, but as I’m doing this week by week he had to be there. Getting sneak attacked at the top of the show and then running from Shane didn’t make Orton look like a heel, it made him look like a punk. No one should be running from someone like Shane McMahon and certainly not a brilliant heel like Orton. Whereas Miz took on Cena and outsmarted him.
The rating system I developed is harsh and very personal based on what I believe is a heel move and what is a face promoting move and Orton was on the bad end of the scale this week. He was actually ahead of The Miz before I factored in the minuses, but nothing negative happened to The Miz this week so he rode past Orton, same with Ziggler. I’m sure Orton will catch up in the weeks to come. (At least I hope so because he happens to be my favourite wrestler in the WWE right now)
Believe me, Im glad that you rated Miz that high. After the great shoot he did on Cena, “Cena you are all hype, turned out by the wwe machine so the kiddies have someone to cheer for and their mothers have someone to fanatasize about.” Anyone who does that to Cena gets an A for the week from me. I forgot that this was a weekly thing, and not overall so I now understand why you rated miz over Orton.
great article. I’d put “the beautiful people” in rather than Maryse. I also think Jerico is the best heel right now only because of the way he assults the crown.
the real thing I want to know is, who’s the next to turn? Heel turns are the best part of the show. It’s why I watch. With the loss of MVP there’s an opening. I’m going with CM punk.
The great thing about heel turns are; they’re sudden and explosive. Unlike face turns which take a long time.
My favorite heel turn of all time? So many good ones but the one that sticks out was the attitude era Shawn Michaels turn. He was pointing his finger at everybody yelling “ten years I’ve given you people, this is how you repay me?” as they boo him out of the ring.
Rick Flair has given us many great turns also… Oh the memories.
I would love to see a good heel turn, the problem is that the WWE don’t seem to want to have any. They seem to be fine with turning heels face but I seriously cannot remember the last decent heel turn.
As for “the beautiful people” I think they are the best female heel wrestlers in the business but the report only concerns WWE wrestlers. I decided to make it that way because TNA isn’t as heel vs face focused, which makes it hard to judge. Like the Motor City Machine Guns (my favorite tag team) from week to week you can’t tell whether they are heel or face. I personally think that makes for better wrestling but for this report it doesn’t really help. Also only having one show means that not everyone appears on the program each week so it’s not really fair on some of the lesser heels who only appear every couple of weeks like Sheik Abdul Bashir, who is an amazingly antagonistic heel. So no TNA wreslters will feature in this report, which is a shame because I’m convinced that TNA is the superior company at the moment.
My most memorable heel turn is probably Undertaker when he made JR kiss Vince’s ass because he was already so big by then that you wouldn’t think he could get the fans to boo him, but he did.